How did the great recession affect different types of workers ? evidence from 17 middle-income countries

This paper examines how different types of workers in 17 middle-income countries were affected by labor market retrenchment during the great recession. Impacts on different types of workers varied by country and were only weakly related to the severity of the shock. Among active workers, youth experienced by far the largest adverse impacts on employment, unemployment, and wage employment, particularly relative to older adults. The percentage employment reductions, for example, were greatest for youth in each sector of the economy, as firms reacted to the shock by substituting away from inexperienced workers. Employment rates, as a share of the population, also plummeted for men. Larger drops in male employment were primarily attributable to men's higher initial rate of employment, although men's concentration in the hard-hit industrial sector also played an important role. Within each sector, percentage employment declines were similar for men and women. Added worker effects among women were mild, even among less-educated workers. Differences in labor market outcomes across education groups and urban or rural residence tended to be smaller. These findings bolster the case for targeted support to displaced youth and wage employees. Programs targeted to female and unskilled workers should be undertaken with appropriate caution or empirical support from timely data, as they may not benefit the majority of affected workers.Labor Markets,Labor Policies,Labor Standards,Work&Working Conditions,Population Policies

How Did the Great Recession Affect Different Types of Workers? Evidence from 17 Middle-Income Countries

This paper examines how different types of workers in 17 middle-income countries were affected by labor market retrenchment during the great recession. Impacts on different types of workers varied by country and were only weakly related to the severity of the shock. Among active workers, youth experienced by far the largest adverse impacts on employment, unemployment, and wage employment, particularly relative to older adults. The percentage employment reductions, for example, were greatest for youth in each sector of the economy, as firms reacted to the shock by substituting away from inexperienced workers. Employment rates, as a share of the population, also plummeted for men. Larger drops in male employment were primarily attributable to men's higher initial rate of employment, although men's concentration in the hard-hit industrial sector also played an important role. Within each sector, percentage employment declines were similar for men and women. Added worker effects among women were mild, even among less-educated workers. Differences in labor market outcomes across education groups and urban or rural residence tended to be smaller. These findings bolster the case for targeted support to displaced youth and wage employees. Programs targeted to female and unskilled workers should be undertaken with appropriate caution or empirical support from timely data, as they may not benefit the majority of affected workers.labor markets, emerging economies, economic shocks

The effect of school type on academic achievement : evidence from Indonesia

Using data from Indonesia, Newhouse and Beegle to evaluate the impact of school type on academic achievement of junior secondary school students (grades 7-9). Students that graduate from public junior secondary schools, controlling for a variety of other characteristics, score 0.15 to 0.3 standard deviations higher on the national exit exam than comparable privately schooled peers. This finding is robust to OLS, fixed-effects, and instrumental variable estimation strategies. Students attending Muslim private schools, including Madrassahs, fare no worse on average than students attending secular private schools. The results provide indirect evidence that higher quality inputs at public junior secondary schools promote higher test scores.Teaching and Learning,Secondary Education,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Primary Education,Gender and Education

The value of vocational education : high school type and labor market outcomes in Indonesia

This paper examines the relationship between the type of senior high school attended by Indonesian youth and their subsequent labor market outcomes. This topic is very timely, given the government’s recent decision to dramatically expand vocational enrollment. The analysis controls for an unusually rich set of predetermined characteristics, and exploits longitudinal data spanning 14 years to separately identify cohort and age effects. There are four main findings. First, students are sorted into different school types largely on the basis of their entering exam score. Public schools attract the highest-scoring students, while private vocational schools serve the lowest-scoring students. Second, after controlling for a variety of characteristics, including test scores, male public school graduates earn a substantial premium over their privately schooled counterparts. Third, private vocational school graduates fare at least as well as private general graduates, despite coming from more disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. Finally, the returns to public vocational education have declined sharply for the most recent cohort of men. This raises important concerns about the current expansion of public vocational education, and the relevance of the male vocational curriculum in an increasingly service-oriented economy.Tertiary Education,Secondary Education,Education For All,Labor Markets,Teaching and Learning

Fewer jobs or smaller paychecks ? aggregate crisis impacts in selected middle-income countries

This paper reviews evidence from 44 middle-income countries on how the recent financial crisis affected jobs and workers'incomes. In addition to providing a rare assessment of the magnitude of the impact across several middle-income countries, the paper describes how labor markets adjusted and how the adjustments varied for different types of countries. The main finding is that the crisis affected the quality of employment more than the number of jobs. Overall, the slow-down in earning growth was considerably higher than that in employment, and the decline in gross domestic product was associated with a sharp decline in output per worker, particularly in the industrial sector. In several counties, hours per worker declined and hourly wages changed little. But both the magnitude and nature of the adjustments varied considerably across countries. For a given drop in gross domestic product, earnings declined more in countries with larger manufacturing sectors, smaller export sectors, and more stringent labor market regulations. In addition, overall employment became more sensitive to growth in gross domestic product. These findings have implications that go beyond the recent financial crisis as they highlight (i) the limitations of focusing policy responses on maintaining jobs and providing alterative employment or replacement income for the unemployed, and (ii) the critical role of fast-track data systems that are capable of monitoring ongoing labor market adjustment during economic downturns, in supporting the design of effective policy responses.Labor Markets,Labor Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Markets and Market Access,Labor Management and Relations

Severance pay compliance in Indonesia

This paper contributes new evidence from two large household surveys on the compliance of firms with severance pay regulations in Indonesia, and the extent to which changes in severance pay regulations could affect employment rigidity. Compliance appears to be low, as only one-third of workers entitled to severance pay report receiving it, and on average workers only collect 40 percent of the payment due to them. Eligible female and low-wage workers are least likely to report receiving payments. Widespread non-compliance is consistent with trends in employment rigidity, which remained essentially unchanged following the large increases in severance mandated by the 2003 law. These results suggest that workers may benefit from a compromise that relaxes severance pay regulations while improving enforcement of severance pay statutes, and possibly establishing a system of unemployment benefits.Labor Markets,Wages, Compensation&Benefits,Social Protections&Assistance,Labor Policies,Labor Management and Relations

Distributional impact analysis of past climate variability in rural Indonesia

In rural Indonesia, around 60 percent of workers engage in agriculture and face regular climatic shocks that may threaten their crop production, household income, and human capital investments. Little is known about households’ ability to maintain consumption in response to these shocks. This paper uses both longitudinal and repeated cross-sectional data to examine the extent to which farm profits and household consumption are reduced by delayed monsoon onset, an important determinant of rice production in Indonesia. It also investigates whether poor households are more vulnerable to delayed onset. Overall, delayed onset has minor effects on rural households’ profit and consumption. For poor households, defined as those with average per capita consumption in the lowest quintile, delayed onset the previous year is associated with a 13 percent decline in per capita consumption. Most of this decline is due to an increase in household size, however, and delayed onset two years ago is positively correlated with consumption. The findings suggest that poor households experience greater volatility but no lasting reduction in consumption following delayed monsoon onset.Rural Poverty Reduction,Small Area Estimation Poverty Mapping,Consumption,Regional Economic Development

Fewer Jobs or Smaller Paychecks? Labor Market Impacts of the Recent Crisis in Middle-Income Countries

This note presents early evidence on the labor market impacts of the recent economic crisis in 41 middle-income countries.A broader geographic coverage is prevented by the lack of high-frequency labor market data in other middle-income countries and in the low-income countries. Whereas the economic downturn has threatened recent progress in enhancing employment opportunities, the impact has fallen disproportionately on the quality of employment rather than on the number of jobs. Slower growth in earnings accounts for nearly three quarters of the total adjustment for the average country. The bulk of the earnings adjustment was driven by a reduction in working hours, as well as a shift away from the better-paid industrial sector. Evidence of the adjustment’s nature and magnitude suggests a policy package that combines (1) income maintenance programs—that is, cash transfers to low-paid poor workers; (2) interventions that facilitate flexible-hours arrangements; and (3) innovative policies that provide workers access to income maintenance mechanisms to compensate for temporary reductions in standard working hours—for example, by granting partial compensation from the unemployment benefit system or by providing paid training opportunities.jobs, wages, labor market, financial crisis, middle-income countries, employment, growth, earnings, unemployment, cash transfers

The Impact of State Physical Education Requirements on Youth Physical Activity and Overweight

To combat childhood overweight, which has risen dramatically in the past three decades, many medical and public health organizations have called for students to spend more time in physical education (PE) classes. This paper is the first to exploit state PE requirements as quasi-natural experiments in order to estimate the causal impact of PE on student activity and weight. We study nationwide data from the YRBSS for 1999, 2001, and 2003 merged with data on state minimum PE requirements from the 1994 and 2000 School Health Policies and Programs Study and the 2001 Shape of the Nation Report. We find that certain state regulations are effective in raising the number of minutes during which students are active in PE. Our results also indicate that additional PE time raises the number of days per week that students report having exercised or engaged in strength-building activities, but lowers the number of days in which students report light physical activity. PE time has no detectable impact on youth BMI or the probability that a student is overweight. We conclude that while raising PE requirements may make students more active by some (but not all) measures, there is not yet the scientific base to declare raising PE requirements an anti-obesity initiative.

Poverty Mapping Using Convolutional Neural Networks Trained on High and Medium Resolution Satellite Images, With an Application in Mexico

Mapping the spatial distribution of poverty in developing countries remains an important and costly challenge. These "poverty maps" are key inputs for poverty targeting, public goods provision, political accountability, and impact evaluation, that are all the more important given the geographic dispersion of the remaining bottom billion severely poor individuals. In this paper we train Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to estimate poverty directly from high and medium resolution satellite images. We use both Planet and Digital Globe imagery with spatial resolutions of 3-5 sq. m. and 50 sq. cm. respectively, covering all 2 million sq. km. of Mexico. Benchmark poverty estimates come from the 2014 MCS-ENIGH combined with the 2015 Intercensus and are used to estimate poverty rates for 2,456 Mexican municipalities. CNNs are trained using the 896 municipalities in the 2014 MCS-ENIGH. We experiment with several architectures (GoogleNet, VGG) and use GoogleNet as a final architecture where weights are fine-tuned from ImageNet. We find that 1) the best models, which incorporate satellite-estimated land use as a predictor, explain approximately 57% of the variation in poverty in a validation sample of 10 percent of MCS-ENIGH municipalities; 2) Across all MCS-ENIGH municipalities explanatory power reduces to 44% in a CNN prediction and landcover model; 3) Predicted poverty from the CNN predictions alone explains 47% of the variation in poverty in the validation sample, and 37% over all MCS-ENIGH municipalities; 4) In urban areas we see slight improvements from using Digital Globe versus Planet imagery, which explain 61% and 54% of poverty variation respectively. We conclude that CNNs can be trained end-to-end on satellite imagery to estimate poverty, although there is much work to be done to understand how the training process influences out of sample validation.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Presented at NIPS 2017 Workshop on Machine Learning for the Developing Worl